A database of travel-related behaviors and attitudes before, during, and after COVID-19 in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted billions of people around the world. To capture some of these impacts in the United States, we are conducting a nationwide longitudinal survey collecting information about activity and travel-related behaviors and attitudes before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey questions cover a wide range of topics including commuting, daily travel, air travel, working from home, online learning, shopping, and risk perception, along with attitudinal, socioeconomic, and demographic information. The survey is deployed over multiple waves to the same respondents to monitor how behaviors and attitudes evolve over time. Version 1.0 of the survey contains 8,723 responses that are publicly available. This article details the methodology adopted for the collection, cleaning, and processing of the data. In addition, the data are weighted to be representative of national and regional demographics. This survey dataset can aid researchers, policymakers, businesses, and government agencies in understanding both the extent of behavioral shifts and the likelihood that changes in behaviors will persist after COVID-19.

Investigating Attitudinal and Behavioral Changes in U.S. Households Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic [Project]

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced rapid, large changes in U.S. households’ social dynamics resulting in substantial changes in their behavior. Virtually overnight, a large fraction of U.S. households has transitioned from a reality of long commutes, in-person classes and business meetings, and in-store shopping to one of telecommuting, online classes and business meetings, and online shopping – even for groceries. Many of these changes were happening already, but COVID-19 has pressed the fast-forward button. In this proposal, the research team is interested to know, after the threat of contagion is gone, to what extent will American society “go back” to the pre-COVID-19 way of life? Which behavioral changes will be long-lasting, and for whom? How, if at all, are the attitudes that underpinned the American lifestyle shifting in this crisis, and will these shifts be long-term? Moreover, what are the largest impacts of confinement in terms of attitudes and behavior? Over the past month, thought leaders have published widely in the popular press on these topics (e.g., Fulton, 2020), but to the team's knowledge, no data yet exists that can substantiate or refute their predictions. This project will begin to answer the questions listed above by deploying a nationwide multi-wave survey focused on social dynamics, attitudes, and behavior of American households before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the survey, the participants will be told upfront that they will be asked to fill follow up surveys at the 3-month, 6-month, and 9-month marks. Because the team expects participants to complete the (initial) survey at different times (in response to reminders), the data collection will, in effect, turn into a virtual continuous data collection protocol;thus, providing valuable longitudinal data that allows the near-continuous tracking of behaviors, attitudes, preferences, and perceptions.

The potential stickiness of pandemic-induced behavior changes in the United States.

Human behavior is notoriously difficult to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring about long-term behavioral changes. During the pandemic, people have been forced to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. A critical question going forward is how these experiences have actually changed preferences and habits in ways that might persist after the pandemic ends. Many observers have suggested theories about what the future will bring, but concrete evidence has been lacking. We present evidence on how much US adults expect their own postpandemic choices to differ from their prepandemic lifestyles in the areas of telecommuting, restaurant patronage, air travel, online shopping, transit use, car commuting, uptake of walking and biking, and home location. The analysis is based on a nationally representative survey dataset collected between July and October 2020. Key findings include that the "new normal" will feature a doubling of telecommuting, reduced air travel, and improved quality of life for some.